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The Reliability of Optical Disks

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Re: The Reliability of Optical Disks

#71
post #4

It feels weird to me to call optical media disks instead of discs.

"(The spelling disk and disc are used interchangeably except where trademarks preclude one usage, e.g. the Compact Disc logo. The choice of a particular form is frequently historical, as in IBM's usage of the disk form beginning in 1956 with the "IBM 350 disk storage unit").":

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_storage

Re: The Reliability of Optical Disks

#72

Finally, optical disks are more expensive than HDDs - at least in cost per GB. A 4TB NAS branded HDD costs ~AU$160, which is ~4c/GB. My last BluRay purchase was for 3 x 50 spindles of 25GB disks costing AU$330, which works out to be ~9c/GB. For anybody with deep knowledge of the industry, is the price of discs an accurate reflection of costs or is it inflated by secondary factors such as attempts to make the media mo…

I thought BluRay was subject to the blank media levy in Australia, but apparently not! [0] Note that not every country got off without though - just a few lines down, the article notes the levy is present on BluRay discs in Finland, among others. As an aside, I'm of the impression not enough people know about this levy. It feels to me like the kind of thing that fouls up the "nothing to hide" arguments regarding priv…

It's bizarre to me that lawmakers can get away with corruption that blatant.

Re: The Reliability of Optical Disks

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting because hard disks are not a particularly reliable form of backup. As long as you have enough copies.

I know, I've had many fail on me over the years. Quantity, though, has a quality all its own!

Same here. I just have a mirrored Storage Space for critical data with ReFS and checksums (though Microsoft did not make that one easy to understand so I am unsure if the data is safe that way).

UPD. just searched, and found, that I needed to enable periodic scrubbing in Task Scheduler: Microsoft -> Windows -> Data Integrity Scan section. I already had data integrity streams enabled (another thing you have to do manually after creating the volume).

Re: The Reliability of Optical Disks

#74
Great article discussing the benefits of optical discs and the author's own experience of using them!

I burned hundreds of discs a decade ago and read them all back perfectly, to my surprise. I strongly agree with the write-once behavior for photos and downloads. HDDs worry me in the long term because even if the platter holding the data is fine, the R/W head, mechanics, and electronics could fail, not to mention that a head crash could wipe out good data.

I'm extremely disappointed that the capacity of optical disc formats are essentially frozen, topping out at 100 or 128 GB for BD XL. They're definitely not keeping up with the continual increase in storage density and decreasing cost of hard disks and flash memory. Why are new formats not forthcoming? Where's my 300 GB Archival Disc? Where's my 1 TB holographic disc? Where's Microsoft's glass optical disc that's stable for millions of years?

I want to keep on burning optical discs and putting them in cold storage, but this gradually obsolete technology is not making a convincing case for me today.

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26038893 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29221418

Re: The Reliability of Optical Disks

#75
post #74

Great article discussing the benefits of optical discs and the author's own experience of using them! I burned hundreds of discs a decade ago and read them all back perfectly, to my surprise. I strongly agree with the write-once behavior for photos and downloads. HDDs worry me in the long term because even if the platter holding the data is fine, the R/W head, mechanics, and electronics could fail, not to mention tha…

How many people are buying these 128GB discs? Probably not a whole lot and that is the reason why nobody’s going to make the investment to create bigger discs.

If you want huge local offline storage, the solution is tapes.

Re: The Reliability of Optical Disks

#76
post #74

Great article discussing the benefits of optical discs and the author's own experience of using them! I burned hundreds of discs a decade ago and read them all back perfectly, to my surprise. I strongly agree with the write-once behavior for photos and downloads. HDDs worry me in the long term because even if the platter holding the data is fine, the R/W head, mechanics, and electronics could fail, not to mention tha…

How many people are buying these 128GB discs? Probably not a whole lot and that is the reason why nobody’s going to make the investment to create bigger discs. If you want huge local offline storage, the solution is tapes.

Even lowly LTO2 is 400gb. Plus the reliability of long term storage of tape is much better researched.

Re: The Reliability of Optical Disks

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope! Apple—of all companies—has a support article on this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201697

> Nope! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_of_disc > the spelling disk is more popular in American English, while the spelling disc is more popular in British English

> In 1979, the Dutch company Philips, along with Sony, developed and trademarked the compact disc using the "c" spelling. The "c" spelling is now used consistently for optical media such as the compact disc and similar technologies.

Re: The Reliability of Optical Disks

#78
Could do RAID 4/5/6 with Optical Disks too for additional paranoia.

Ideally there should be some machine to go through old backups and upon first detection of an error, then it could regenerate the array from the remaining discs of that array.

Re: The Reliability of Optical Disks

#79
post #74

Great article discussing the benefits of optical discs and the author's own experience of using them! I burned hundreds of discs a decade ago and read them all back perfectly, to my surprise. I strongly agree with the write-once behavior for photos and downloads. HDDs worry me in the long term because even if the platter holding the data is fine, the R/W head, mechanics, and electronics could fail, not to mention tha…

How many people are buying these 128GB discs? Probably not a whole lot and that is the reason why nobody’s going to make the investment to create bigger discs. If you want huge local offline storage, the solution is tapes.

But it is already known that magnetic tape is much less reliable in long term storage. The author is looking for long-term reliability, not just huge local offline storage.

Re: The Reliability of Optical Disks

#80

Could do RAID 4/5/6 with Optical Disks too for additional paranoia. Ideally there should be some machine to go through old backups and upon first detection of an error, then it could regenerate the array from the remaining discs of that array.

Use PAR2 files, like Usenet does.
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